Care home manager jailed for conning elderly resident

Elm Lodge Residetial Home Enys Rd SUS-140423-152558001

The 53-year-old manager of an Eastbourne care home has been jailed after conning an elderly patient she was meant to be looking after out of more than £3,000.

Sentencing Delores Bajwa, former manager of the Elm Lodge Care Home in Enys Road, for fraud by abuse of her position, Her Honour Judge Shani Barnes said, “You were convicted by a jury of an offence of the utmost gravity. You were the manager of a care home and had a duty to safeguard the wellbeing of your patients, many of whom were vulnerable members of society. This was not a lapse in judgement. It involved a degree of planning.

“You planned to get from him as much money as you could. You complained about financial problems and pretended you had suffered a garage break-in which was going to cost thousands in repairs. Your husband took the victim to a cash point to get money. You then tried to persuade other members of staff to cover for you and used manipulation to obtain proof to back up your accounting.”

The offences took place between June and August 2012 and the sum of money involved was £3,420,00. At her three-day trial, Bajwa denied fraud but the jury found her guilty on all three counts.

Defending, Anthony Waller told Lewes Crown Court that Bajwa was of previous good character. “She is a very caring individual and this is out of character given her previous good work with vulnerable people.”

He explained that her husband is unable to find a job so their flat will be repossessed.Bajwa, who had suffered a breakdown, had been looking after her elderly mother, who has health problems.

DC Tania Snashall said, “Bajwa was employed in a position of utmost trust as the manager of a care home to safeguard vulnerable adults in her care and she abused this position to make a gain for herself. Her actions have caused a huge amount of stress and upset for the vulnerable victim involved in this care. The jury returned a verdict which will finally be able to give the victim closure on this matter which has been ongoing for 18 months. I would like to thank the care home for their co-operation throughout this investigation. Sussex Police is fully committed to investigating crimes against vulnerable adults and this care has shown that, with the co-operation of the people involved, justice has been done for a member of society that had been taken advantage of by someone he trusted implicitly.”

Bajwa was sentenced to a 20 months’ jail for the first count and nine months for each of two further counts, to be served concurrently. She will serve half the time in custody.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Eastbourne Herald provides news, events and sport features from the Eastbourne area. For the best up to date information relating to Eastbourne and the surrounding areas visit us at Eastbourne Herald regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Eastbourne Herald requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.